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Hey guys! I’ve been hard at work moving the content at the old site, sheeves.me/drums to the new domain quainpercussion.com and new server. There are several reasons I needed to make this move. The most important one is that my new domain looks a lot more professional than the old one. sheeves.me started out as my personal website and blog and when I started building my cajon drums I built my site on that server. This caused a lot of problems. People were confused if they left out the /drums part of the url. Nobody knew what a sheeves was and ending in “.me” didn’t imply to most folks that this was a website.

The other reason I needed to move the server was because while my old amazon server was fun to play around with, it was very small and prone to crashing when under a heavy load. As my site became more popular, the crashes came more frequently until I was restarting the server almost every day. The new host is cheaper and more powerful than the old amazon server.

Now all I have left to do is contact everyone who posted a link to my website and let them know the address has changed! That’s going to be a lot of fun!

In other news, I just received a large shipment of wood and will have cajons flying out the door in no time!

Here’s a quick look at my latest work in progress. Wooden bongos! Or should I say cabongos? Whatever you decide to call them, they’re pretty cool. The tone is similar to that of wood blocks, but the playing style comes directly from the bongo drums. Each drum has a high and low tone, just like you would expect, and they will be tuned just like a traditional bongo. They’re so much fun to play and would make a great addition to any drummer’s arsenal.

Once I figure out tuning and mounting, I’ll definitely add these sweet wooden bongos to my lineup!

2013 was a very exciting time for me. I first thought about building cajon drums three months ago. Since then, I have come so very far. I started out building my cajons using borrowed hand tools on a picnic table at a friends house between classes. I started perfecting my design, studying the physics of sound and the history of the drum. After that, I began studying woodworking. Although woodcraft is a skill that takes a lifetime to master, I have made a start.

Soon, I decided to start selling my drums. My homemade drums sounded better and had higher quality construction than the drums I saw in my local music shops. Once I found I could produce them for a competitive price without sacrificing quality I decided to go for it. Who wouldn’t? I’ve always loved a challenge and this business will challenge all of my favorite skills. My programming and web design background will help me build a great website, my 11 years of music experience will help me spread my name and my desire to find out how things work will help me push the envelope with my designs.

It may not look like much right now, but I have big plans for Quain Percussion.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope the holidays have been great to you! My parents were nice enough to get me some beautiful new hand tools this year. After all the festivities, Matt and I set up shop in my parent’s garage/shop space. This is a huge upgrade over the picnic table at a friends house that I have been using.

This is the shop as of now. I’m pretty pleased to have a space to work! Before I was working outside on a picnic table at a friends house.

My parents gave me this pretty block plane. It works well!

Here’s Matt, my brother, trying to get a picture of the inside of our latest cajon.

A cajon in progress

Everybody needs a place to relax while the glue dries!

Well, there you have it. That’s our new shop. I will keep you up to date on our progress here and on our facebook page. I hope many, many great instruments come out of this place. Thanks for reading and merry Christmas!

In the ongoing quest to spread the word about my cajons, I meet many interesting people. Most recently, I met John LeCompt, guitarist for Evanescence, We Are The Fallen and Machina. He ran across one of my local ads on Craigslist and runs a studio that’s not too far from my hometown. He was interested in my Live! Series Cajon and I was happy to build him one!

It was a win-win for both of us! I got to meet one of my idols and get a little exposure for my drums, he got a great sounding cajon drum! We talked for about two hours about the music industry, his time performing and his various music projects. I’ve been a guitarist for 11 years, so it was an awesome experience to sit down and play a little with him. Unfortunately, his guitar was tuned to open C# or something like that. I wasn’t able to play anything, but it made a great picture!

For the past few months, I have been contemplating the design for a multiple tone cajon drum. With the right marketing, I think a cajon with multiple tone chambers could be a huge hit. I have been doing my research and of course seeing what my competitors offer. While there are a few people out there offering great sounding and high quality cajon drums, none of them have been properly marketed (in my opinion). Here are a few videos demonstrating what’s out there.

Medium-Size Dog Cajon

This is a cajon by the builder “Medium Size Dog”. It has a great sound! I would love to build something like this one day. There are multiple tone-chambers on the inside of his drum, making all those bongo-type sounds. If you like this sound, check him out at http://www.mediumsizedog.com/

TheBoxKit

Here’s a cajon called the BoxKit. They have many tones although from the look of the video some are difficult to reach. These cajons are made in North Carolina by builder Josh Trask. Their website is http://theboxkit.com/

Outside The Box Drums – Dual Tone Cajon

And finally, here is a dual-tone cajon by Outside The Box Drums. This drum has an internal baffle with two separate tone chambers. It has a great sound! Check them out at http://www.outsidetheboxdrums.com/

Hopefully, this post will drum up a little business for them, (see what I did there?) and help generate some interest for multi-tone cajons! I’m still developing my drum, but I will keep you updated on the progress here.

Well, it looks like winter is here! I’m thankful I don’t have to go anywhere soon; School has been canceled and I’m staying with friends who have a nice fireplace! The forecast says to expect 11.5″ of snow on top of a nice 1/2″ of ice! That doesn’t happen often this far south. Needless to say, there’s a general sense of panic around here. People are driving into ditches (because they never learned to drive in snow), branches are falling on cars and the grocery stores are completely out of bread!

It’s about time for a blog on this site! Today is November 28th, otherwise known as Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for a lot of things. I am able to spend some time with my family and brother before rushing back to school on Monday. It’s been nice. Matt and I spent the day finishing up some drum builds!